


there's one thing on my mind, it's all for you

by thekaidonovskys



Series: After the Drift [11]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: M/M, Miscommunication, dealing with the past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-28
Updated: 2014-07-28
Packaged: 2018-02-10 18:40:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2035809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thekaidonovskys/pseuds/thekaidonovskys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hermann stops and swallows hard and okay, now Newt’s actually pretty terrified because he’s got no idea what’s going on but it’s bad, it’s clearly bad and it clearly involves him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	there's one thing on my mind, it's all for you

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted by Tumblr user thekaidonovskys. Mentions of code are all from Wikipedia and entirely made up because I wouldn't know the first thing about code, let alone Jaeger code.

If Newt had been asked, he would have predicted that the first time his and Hermann’s relationship might come into serious jeopardy would be when one of them stuck their foot in it. A comment as simple as “I honestly cannot understand why I ever agreed to move to Geneva with you”; or perhaps a much stupider and more personal barb that Newt doesn’t even want to imagine. Maybe he’d get drunk, because when Newt gets drunk he does some pretty idiotic things, which is why he doesn’t get drunk much. Or just tempers flaring in the lab and their bickering finally pushing into their personal lives, which they’ve tried to keep separate for so long. 

He certainly wouldn’t have predicted it would come about from Hermann asking if he had a spare recorder for him to borrow.

“Hm?” Newt asks, currently in a bit of a whirlwind of papers. “Recorder? Like, voice recorder?”

“Yes. Mine’s broken.”

“Top drawer.”

Hermann looks. “There are three,” he says. “Which one?”

Newt pauses long enough to examine them. Now that Hermann doesn’t object quite so much to Newt bouncing ideas off him instead of having to record them all, Newt hasn’t had to use one of his recorders in ages, and he frowns. “No idea what’s on them. I know one’s full of Kaiju data that I should probably back up, and I think I’ve used another one for something but I don’t know which ones. I can run through them… um, soon?”

“If you don’t mind me doing it, I can check them all before I record my podcast.”

Newt smiles - because the idea of Hermann’s podcasts still amuse him but hey, it’s the  _UN_ asking for them so he’s definitely got to respect it - and nods. “Sure thing. What’s the topic?”

“Applications of the Walsh-Hadamard code in Jaeger construction.”

“Walsh-Hadamard?”

“A subcode of the long code, a linear code over a binary alphabet that maps messages of length  _k_ to codewords of length two to the power of  _k_ , with each non-zero codeword having a Hamming weight of exactly two to the power of  _k_ over two -*“

“You know what? I’m gonna go ahead and take your word for it.”

Hermann smiles, then leans over and kisses him. “Back in a bit.”

“Take your time. I’m gonna get to slicing up guts.”

“Lovely. Back in a much longer time then.”

Newt chuckles as he leaves, then true to his word, gets back to his specimen. 

***

When Hermann comes back a couple of hours later, Newt doesn’t look up, in the middle of something intricate. “Hey, Herms,” he says cheerfully. “Did you get the recording done?”

No reply, but there’s a small clunk and all three of his recorders are placed back on his desk. He hears Hermann take an unusually deep breath, and his voice is quiet and odd when he speaks. “The silver recorder is the one you require with your Kaiju information. The red one is the one I used and is now empty. And the black one…”

That’s when Newt finally looks up, and for a second he just stares. “Hermann?” he finally asks, and then the words trip out as he shoots to his feet. “Oh my  _god_ , what happened? Are you alright? What -“

Because Hermann’s eyes are red-rimmed and swollen. He looks like he’s been crying for hours. 

He nods to the black recorder. “I have left the message that you recorded on the device in case you wish to keep it.”

“What message?”

“The -“ Hermann stops and swallows hard and okay, now Newt’s actually pretty terrified because he’s got _no idea_ what’s going on but it’s bad, it’s clearly bad and it clearly involves him. “The one you left before you Drifted with the first Kaiju.”

“Oh, man, I knew I must’ve left something, but I didn’t think to check the recorder. I looked for some kind of note but then I just figured I hadn’t wasted time with it, wasn’t sure if I’d been in a hurry or not -“

“I’m sorry?” Hermann asks. “You don’t… remember?”

“Nope. The Drift wiped about two or three minutes of the memories immediately beforehand. I can’t remember - that’s why I recorded, clearly. Because I thought there might be some short-term memory loss or something or -“

“Or in case you died and needed everybody to know who was responsible.”

Newt stops and very slowly takes that in. Then he swears and fumbles for the recorder. “What did I do? What did I say?” He gets it switched on, hits the playback button, and -

_“Hermann, if you’re listening to this, well, I’m either alive and I’ve proven what I’ve just done works - in which case, ha, I win. Or I’m dead, and I’d like you to know this is all your fault. It really is. You drove me to this. In which case, ha, I still win. Sort of.”_

Somehow Newt’s thumb finds the stop button. Somehow he finds his chair and sits back down. 

“Shit,” he whispers. 

“You - you don’t recall saying that?”

“No,” Newt says. “No, and thank  _fuck_ for that because I don’t  _ever_ want to remember a time when I was such an unmitigated  _bastard!_ ”

He knows he startles Hermann when he throws himself back out of his chair, knows he’s shocked him into silence as Newt paces, swearing and running his hands through his hair, and any other day he’d gloat about that but  _not today,_ not after  _that_  -

“Newton,” Hermann begins.

“Oh, no, no you don’t,” Newt says, his voice a little hysterical as he does another lap of the room. “No, I know that tone, you fucking  _don’t_  get to try and tell me it’s okay now, not after I made you cry -“

He stops, and that sinks in. Then he spins on his heel, straight over to Hermann and stares at him. “I made you cry,” he repeats, and his voice is shaking. 

“Of course you did,” Hermann says. “Do you think I would be able to handle the idea of your potential last moments on this earth being lived in the belief that I wanted you dead? To have made you feel that way -“

“What? Hermann, this isn’t -  _you’re_ not to blame for this, oh my  _god._ How can you even think -“

“How can I think that I was selfish and arrogant enough to belittle your research, to refuse to listen, and to not know you well enough to know that you would just do it anyway? Easy. I know I am strongly to blame for the fact that you were left Drifting alone, then left seizing alone on the lab floor, and if you had died, I would have -“

“No, no no  _no_.  _Hermann._ Stop. Just -“ Newt takes a shaky breath and turns away. “This is why you Drifted with me,” he murmurs after a moment. “It wasn’t that you - you didn’t think I was right. You did it out of guilt.”

“I did it out of need,” Hermann says, his voice still flat. “I did it because if I didn’t at least try to help take the neural load you might die and then whatever you had found out would never be known -“

“You didn’t  _want_ to -“

“Of course I didn’t  _want to!”_ Hermann suddenly explodes, and Newt stares at him again. “I didn’t want to risk my life,  _our_ lives, because I was the one who found you fitting on the floor, I was the one who thought you might be  _dead_  because - because you had been so stubborn and refused to tell anybody what you were doing and then went and did it  _again_ and how could I let you go alone if my presence meant you might have had more of a chance of surviving? And if I had heard that  _bloody_ message beforehand I would have knocked the helmet off your head and done it by myself.”

“I wouldn’t have let you.”

“I wouldn’t have cared. It was my fault that you Drifted alone the first time, that you had to build a neural bridge out of garbage. If - if I had been more approachable, if I had listened, then I could have at least made it safer for you.” Hermann sniffs and this time he’s the one to turn away. “When I saw you after that Drift,” he says, and his voice is ripping at Newt’s heart, “I knew it was my fault. And I yelled at you and I tried to make Pentacost see another way, not because I thought you were wrong but because… because he was going to make you do it again. He was going to risk your life and of course it was a war, of course everybody was risking their lives but - but yours. Not yours. I couldn’t -“

“Hermann,” Newt murmurs. “It’s okay. I didn’t die.”

“You very well could have and, as your recording makes clear, you knew it would have been my fault. As you put that helmet on, you knew that I had driven you to that point -“

“Have you ever been able to tell me what to do a day in your life?”

Hermann pauses. “No,” he says after a moment. “To my great irritation. Perhaps if I had been able to, I would have been able to stop you -”

“Uh-huh, that’s all well and good, not actually  _good_ , but that’s not the point because hey, you’re using your logic wrong. That’s not actually the question I asked. If you’ve never been able to tell me what  _not_ to do, as you keep pointing out, then how could you have told me what  _to_ do? You can’t boss me around, you can’t keep me in line… so how could you drive me to something like that? Really?” He pauses, and Hermann doesn’t reply which is probably a good thing, so Newt presses his advantage. “I Drifted because I thought it was the right thing to do. Because I though I was right, and because I was stubborn enough to think that I could do it myself and be fine. And I don’t know what was going on when I made that recording but I’m glad I can’t remember it. To think that I might’ve died and you’d have found that and - and thought…”

“Rightly so -“

“Shut  _up_! Don’t you dare, Hermann, don’t you even  _dare.”_ Newt turns his back and walks away, to the other end of the lab. “Don’t you get it, though?” he says after a moment, to the wall. “It was stupid and I never should have - but don’t you see  _why_? Why, in what were potentially my last moments of life, I left a message like that to you?”

And thank god Hermann doesn’t try to say any more bullshit about  _because it was the truth_. “Why?” he asks. 

“Because - because I loved you. And because I couldn’t tell you that, not when there was a chance I was gonna survive, and not at  _all_ , because I wasn’t brave enough. Not after ten years of bickering and I never thought for a second you’d look at me that way… this way. This. Us. But we - we’d always yelled and clashed and it was always over things that  _mattered_. Not just our work, but… remember that time I passed out ‘cause I forgot to eat? And I came to and you were sitting there with me and as soon as my eyes opened you started telling me what an idiot I was? And the time you came off your ladder too hard and your leg gave out and I spent the whole time getting you down to medical telling you that you were impossible and insufferable? But you brought me lunch for like a week after that, and I snuck out some of the really strong painkillers that medical said you didn’t need and -“

“And we’ve always cared,” Hermann says softly. “We just could never say it. Not until the Drift showed us.”

“Right. And so - so as selfish as that message was, that was me trying to tell you that the last thing I thought of before I potentially died was you. And of course I fucked it up because that’s what I do, I get this shit wrong all the time and then of  _course_ I forgot about it and made you feel like it was your fault and seriously if you want me to leave I can.”

After a second of silence in which Newt gears himself to head for the door, he feels a hand on his shoulder, and then Hermann’s yanking him around, pushing him against the wall and kissing him. And Newt just goes ahead and rolls with it because hey, kissing can’t mean it’s  _too_ bad, right? 

“You absolutely impossible man,” Hermann breaks away long enough to murmur. “How did I not see it for what it really was?”

“Um, because even if it was me trying to show I cared it was still seriously fucked up and manipulative and wrong?”

“Well. Yes. But much of our dealings with one another has been  _seriously fucked up_  until now. We’re doing a lot better these days.”

“Don’t swear,” Newt chides gently. “It’s bad for your image. And it does bad things to me… ooh, there’s a thought.”

“What?”

“Well you’ve got every right to be mad at me and you’re trying to convince me that I should be mad at you and I can’t quite gel with that  _but,_ y’know, I could  _pretend_ and then we could have some really awesome hatesex and then some make-up sex and then we can leave this behind us as one of those stupid things that should never have happened but we’ve learned from and move on.”

“You want to  _roleplay_ an angry sexual encounter?”

Newt gives Hermann his best eyes. “Please?”

“Well then,” Hermann says, leaning close. “In that case, I suppose I am very  _fucking_ angry with you.”

Newt’s groan is swallowed up in Hermann’s lips. 

**Author's Note:**

> This was the one real big thing in canon that pissed me off, and the one thing that I've not really seen addressed in fic in a way that I can agree with. So I hope this works for some other people as well. 
> 
> Title from "Lego House".


End file.
